Pattern of US election interesting infromation
The United States has a presidential election on November 3. Final voting will begin on Tuesday night, Indian time. Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden are in the fray. Only time will tell whether Trump wins or Biden wins. However, there are some important milestones in this journey to reach the White House. Here we are going to tell you about five important camps.
Primary
You could call it the first round of the US presidential election. The Constitution is silent on this matter. It is organized by parties and state governments. In a way, this process started two years before the elections. The leader nominates from his own party. It is later stamped by the people there. In some states candidates are decided by secret ballot and in some by open ballot. Only members vote in the secret ballot and in the open ballot people can vote directly. These people choose a delegate of their own. These delegates nominate the Presidential Candidate to the Party Convention. Then there are primary elections in 44 states. After 2016 10 states shifted from Caucus to primaries.
Caucus
This is an old method of selecting a presidential candidate. It is also called the Iowa Caucus. It is now used in only 6 states. The first thing to understand the Caucus in very simple language is that it is organized directly by the parties. The state government has no role. The parties decide the rules and the electorate. The ballot is not used to elect delegates here. Party members elect one of the many candidates by raising their hands.
Convention
In simple words you can call it a party convention. Party delegates can take part in it, i.e. these people are elected from primaries or caucuses. They elect here by ballot the candidate who will be the presidential candidate. The presidential candidate decides the vice-presidential candidate in consultation with party MPs. The number of delegates elected from each state varies. It depends on the population. California has the highest number of 415 delegates.
Popular vote
In America, voters first elect electors. This makes it an electoral college. The Electoral College elects the President. The question is what is a popular vote? Let's understand it directly. The people i.e. the electorate elects their representative elector. Then this elector chooses the president. Now it is not necessary that people are electing him as an elector, they only vote for the candidate of their choice i.e. the presidential candidate. In 2016, Trump received 62,984,825 (46.4% votes) and Hillary received 65,853,516 (48.5% votes). Hillary was the first choice of the people. However, the electoral vote gave Trump the victory.
Electoral College
There is a lot of discussion on this. Some people have started calling it wrong. 538 electors are elected in 50 states by popular vote. This makes it an electoral college. 270 electoral college votes are needed to become president. Each state will have as many electors as there are MPs elected for both houses. There are 55 in California and only 3 in Wyoming. In 2016, Trump received the support of 306 electors. The figure for Hillary was reduced to 232. She lost the election.
